Συνεργάτες

Τρίτη, 3 Ιανουαρίου 2017

The town now
known as Tekirdağ goes back many centuries. During that time, it acquired a
long succession of names, which mark its course through history and its
dynamism. It was at the coastal area where present-day Tekirdağ is situated
that colonizers from Samos arrived during the second wave of Greek colonization
in the 6th c. B.C. The township thus set up was named Bisanthe. During
the classical era, Bisanthe passed under Athenian rule and served as a centre
where the rich agricultural produce of Thrace was gathered. What little
archaeological remains survived the centuries finally disappeared altogether
during the intensive (re)building of recent times that has also transformed
many other Turkish towns, big and small. A few ancient coins minted in
Rhaedestos during its Athenian era were found in neighbouring Panidos. They are
having the inscription ΒΙΣΑΝΘΗΝΩΝ. Ancient Greek and Roman historians do not provide
much information on Phaedestos, and only mention it occasionally. (Mamoni 2001,
Mavridis 2003, Papakostas 2010)

During the early Byzantine centuries, Rhaedestos was known as Resisto or
Registo. It was fortified by Justinian I against marauders from the interior
looking for a way to the sea through Thrace (Procopius – 1971 edition). Rhaedestos
developed into a centre of commerce and economic activity, and its numerous
names provide evidence for its move from a static agricultural way of life to a
commercial one: Rhaedestos, Redestas, Redestos, Redisco, Rodesto, Rodestol,
Rodestus, Rodischo, Rodistus, Rodosto, Rodostus, Roesto, Rostho, Rothostoca,
Rudischo, Rudustu και Ruysto (Külzer 2008), and more recently Tekfur Dag
and Tekirdağ. Writers’ and
travelers’ comments are now enthousiastic and complimentary.

The earliest settlement of some note in the neighbouring area was the
sister town of Perinthos or Heracleia, at a distance of 30 klm from Rhaedestos.

The course of Rhaedestos through time begins in pre-history, as we now
know thanks to an abundance of remains that archaeologists have dug up in
Thrace. During archaic and classical times, Thrace was organized in domains
relative to the tribal make-up of the population. The land of Thrace is
interspersed with burial mounds and monuments of kings and noblemen from those
times.

During the 4th and 5th c. BC, Thrace was
hellenicised, and in the 1st c. BC it was conquered by the Romans.
In 50 AD, Perinthos became the administrative centre of the Roman province of
Thrace.

In the 5th c. AD, Thrace came under the rule of the Byzantine
Empire. Its fertile lands combined with its short distance from Constantinople
proved very advantageous for Rhaedestos. Thanks to the stability brought about by
Byzantine rule, Rhaedestos became prosperous and developed a social order and
tradition of its own.

Heracleia or ancient Perinthos, also a colony of Samos, “ancient and
renowned” according to Tacitus, was the capital of Thrace. Perinthians called
their home town “dittothalassousa” or twin-sea town, an appellation that
appears on ancient coins of Perinthos. In later times, Perinthos was
overshadowed by Constantinople and neighboring Rhaedestos. St. Andrew the
Apostle preached here and instituted the first Metropolis on European soil,
that of Heracleia, one of whose bishoprics was Rhaedestos.

Following the collapse of the Western Roman State, Heracleia, which was
by now second in importance only to the town of Byzantium, became the see of
the first Metropolitan district of the Byzantine Church. That event
safeguarded, according to the Byzantines, the Apostolic and Ecumenical
character of the Patriarchal See of the New Rome and refuted the Roman Catholic
claim of Rome’s primacy. As a consequence of Heracleia’s decline, the
Metropolis of Heracleia became the Metropolis of Heracleia and Rhaedestos in
1694 (Mavridis 2003). In the 18th c., the Metropolis of Heracleia
and Rhaedestos was fortunate to have at its helm the following five
metropolitans, all hailing from the island of Leros: in chronological order,
Gennadios, Gerasimos, Methodios, Meletios and Ignatios. There are numerous
references in historical records of their contribution to education and to the
amelioration of social conditions. They erected churches and spent large sums
of money on education. They were men of letters. They wrote noteworthy
treatises and were instrumental in the enhancement of social responsibility and
general education.

According to Procopius, Rhaedestos was considered “chorion eulimenon”, a
place blessed with a fine harbour, so much so that Justinian “erected a town,
safely fortified and of an impressive size”. The powerful walls of Rhaedestos
were raised to the ground by the Bulgarian leader Crummus in 813. They were
later re-built, and Rhaedestos remained a walled town until it was taken by GaziSuleymanPashain 1357. In the 13th c., Catholic monks ran a hostel in
Rhaedestos for Western pilgrims on their way to and from the Holy Land.

There was a long tradition of communal and charitable ethic in
Rhaedestos (Mavridis 2003). In 1071, the scholar Michael Attaleiates
(1030-1080), who was also a self-made businessman, senator and judge, set up a
poorhouse in Rhaedestos, where he owned extensive lands and other property. That
charitable institution was near Christ’s Church, where Rüstem PaşaMosque is now situated. It was housed in an old building, which had been
ruined during an earthquake and was subsequently repaired (Mamoni 2001, Mavridis
2003). Attaleiates became more widely known as the author of a History that covers the troubled period
1034-1080.

Attaleiates’s poorhouse functioned on the basis of written rules and was
endowed by its owner with sufficient funds for its continued operation. (Dumbarton
Oaks 1). The author of the rule book was Attaleiates himself, and in it he also
included his thoughts on how to achieve the longevity of the institution, which
he entitled “Poorhouse of the Pan-Oectermon” or of the All Merciful Christ. He was wary of the State as it tended to
antagonize private charitable institutions and go after their property. The
document contains detailed information about the town and the Castle of
Rhaedestos or Kastron, as the town
was also referred to. (Dumbarton Oaks 1). In reference to the latter appellation
of the town, the inhabitants of the inner section of Rhaedestos were until
recently known as Kastriani[1]. Based on the topographical information given by
Attaleiates in his rule book, one could attempt to reconstruct the map of the
town in the 11th c. Attaleiates mentions the existence of
ecclesiastical buildings outside of the western gates, where he had erected and
operated rented accommodation.

The central section of Rhaedestos forms an obtuse-angled triangle, whose
longest side coincides with the coastline of Propontis or Sea of Marmara. In
that inner area, there are no mosques or minarets. It is possible that the Kastron of Rhaedestos with its four
gates was planned in accordance to the mystical Roman and Byzantine urban
planning tradition, whereby the town was sanctified with sacred symbols or
temples. However, we know so little as yet about the Byzantine churches of the
town that we cannot yet pursue such a line of enquiry. The only Byzantine
temple in the town was, until 1935, the small church of Panagia
Revmatokratorissa or of the Virgin Mary, our Lady of Streams, by the sea front.
But even that monument had lost many of its Byzantine features as a result of
repeated repair and reconstruction work.

For a long time after the town was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in
1357, the inner section of Rhaedestos was only inhabited by Romiots or
post-Byzantine Greeks. As far as I know, Xanthe is the only other town in
Thrace with the same privileged living arrangement. It seems that the economic
clout of the Hellenic communities in those two towns, the result of the
commerce of agricultural products and especially tobacco, which was entirely in
Greek hands, made them irreplaceable. An additional explanation might be that
the two towns were not taken by the Turks but negotiated their surrender. According
to oral tradition that has come down to the present day, Rhaedestos surrendered
to the enemy after putting up a fierce resistance round its walls and more
specifically at a place now known as Şehitler
Meşari or Graveyard of the
Martyrs. The Pact containing the conditions of surrender was preserved in the
library of the Metropolis until the great fire of 1826. One of the conditions
was that the people of the town were exempt from providing food and lodgings to
Ottoman soldiers. That condition proved of great importance for the economic
state of the town as Rhaedestos became a meeting point for Ottoman armies
campaigning in Europe.

Subsequently, however, newcomers took over central Rhaedestos and the displaced
Christians moved to seaside quarters. It is not known which of the Byzantine
churches remained in the hands of the Romiot community.

In 1556, during the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, Vizier
Rüstem Paşa decided to erect in Rhaedestos an Islamic külliye[2], which would be a manifestation of the ideal of
Islamic town planning according Ottoman tradition. The külliye, a complex of
public buildings (Mavridis 2010), was erected where the Byzantine Christ’s
Church had been, at the Castle of Rhaedestos. Its construction necessitated a
large labour force, which came from Armenia.

The Greeks of Rhaedestos were mostly urban and had traditionally been
engaged in commerce, mainly in the transport business, which brought great
wealth to some of them. Romiot merchants and craftsmen were organized in guilds
in accordance with Turkish rule in Thrace. Guilds managed their affairs on the
basis of written constitutions. Rhaedestos had for a long time been an
important commercial centre. According to Michael Attaleiates, “There is a
great number of carts carrying grain to the fortress of Rhaedestos” (Kanakis
1997).

In the 11th c., during the reign of Michael Doucas, the
controversial Logothete tou Dromou or
Postal Logothete and acting prime
minister Nicephore, nicknamed Nicephoridzes or Little Nicephore, took
reformative measures to reconstruct the economy of the State. He set up a Fundakas or great store house in
Rhaedestos to monopolize the commerce of wheat and safeguard provisions for
Constantinople, as well as to achieve a fairer taxing system and curb
profiteering. The Fundakas was managed by a fundakarius,
who imposed tax duties and allocated the grain to sitokapiloi or merchants of grain, who owned shops within the
Fundakas, not dissimilar perhaps to those in operation today. The results of
the reformative measures were disappointing and gave rise to public discontent
which developed into an uprising and the destruction of the storehouse. It is
not known if apart from Rhaedestos there were such storehouses in other cities
of the empire too.

As a result of the Turkish conquest, regularity returned to Thrace, as
can be gleaned from foreign travelers’ impressions and comments. For instance,
Daniel Philippides and Gregorios Constantas write in their Neoteric Geography (1781): “Rhaedestos, a renowned city, great and
populous, the see of an Archbishop.” Also, Geoffroi de Villehardouin, crusader
and chronicler, writes in his De la
Conquête de Constantinople (1204) about Rhaedestos: “… inhabited by Greeks
…very rich, strong and big … among the best cities in Romania [Easter Roman
Empire] … situated at an excellent location ...” As for Markos Antonios
Katsaites (1742), his opinion of Rhaedestos is that it is “a glorious city,
among the most interesting in Turkey”.

In the 12th c., Venetian merchants settled in Rhaedestos. The
Emperor had signed a treaty with the Venetians ceding them trade privileges. In
1202 Rhaedestos became a Venetian possession during the 4th Crusade.
Following the breakup and partition of the Empire in 1204, Rhaedestos, like
other commercial towns of Propontis, passed into Venice’s share. In the 13th
c., Genoa took over from Venice. The ruthless Catalan Society took possession of Rhaedestos in 1306 and because
of its central position used it as a base for its operations. Many Greek
inhabitants were put to the sword. In the 14th c., Rhaedestos was
inundated with Catalan and Italian merchants, who took advantage of the failing
Empire. Until recently, Levantine merchants, descendants of the early Western
Catholics who settled there, still lived in the town. The Capuchin Robert de Dreux
described Rhaedestos in 1667 as “… a most beautiful and busy commercial town …
connected to Constantinople by daily transport services.”

In an entry dated 28.5.1720, Kelemen Mikes (new edition 2000) described
the town as follows: “pleasant, picturesque, very big and sophisticated, with
surrounding fields cultivated so that they look like well-tended gardens … it
presents a pleasant view that delights the eyes … built on the coast,
surrounded by vineyards … good and abundant food …”.

Kelemen Mikes also stated in 1721 that Rhaedestos was divided in four
quarters severally inhabited by Romiots, Turks, Armenians and Jews, so that the
various nationalities did not mix. As a result, when the town was hit by
cholera, which was quite frequently, the epidemic was often contained within a
single nationality and did not affect all quarters.

During the first three centuries following the Turkish conquest,
Thrace’s economy shrank, closed in upon itself and ceased trading with the
outside world. At the same time, there was massive movement of Greek
populations from the Aegean islands towards Asia and Thrace, and from mainland
Greece to Asia Minor. Greek communities that took up trade enriched themselves
and molded the identity and character of wider Greek populations around them. The
wider Rhaedestos area with its 28 Ganochora villages and its ample stretches on
the slopes of the Sacred Mountain (Tekfur Dag) attracted large numbers of Greek
settlers from the Aegean and the Peloponnese.

Thanks to such favourable conditions, in the late 17th c.,
Rhaedestos had risen again to be a centre for the concentration and exportation
of the rich agricultural produce of the Thracian interior: wheat, barley, rye,
oats, canary seed, linseed, sesame, leather, dairy products, cloth, woven
fabrics. Kelemen Mikes, the Hungarian political figure and essayist, wrote in 1721
that at harvest time around 300 carts loaded with agricultural goods thronged
into the town each day. Farmers and cattle raisers from Adrianople, Kessane, Saranda
Ecclesies, Vizye, Arkadioupolis, Ganochora and Makra Gefyra drove to Rhaedestos
their ox-drawn carts and camel caravans loaded with their produce.

Business transactions took place in the market and the coffee houses,
behind the commercial buildings still surviving. Wholesale merchants, mainly
Greeks, bought and stored the agricultural goods, and subsequently resold them
and shipped them to Constantinople and the great harbours of Mediterranean
Europe. Ships brought to Rhaedestos olive oil, produce from the islands of the
Aegean, soap, oranges and lemons, textile goods, mechanical equipment and
colonial products. Trade activity in Rhaedestos was supported by artisans and
craftsmen, mostly Romiots, organized in guilds. There were also numerous
Armenians, who had moved to Rhaedestos from the East, and they made a living as
merchants or craftsmen, mainly blacksmiths or tsilingires, who forged farm tools. At the start of 20th
century, there were three banks operating in Rhaedestos, the "Bank of Mytilene"
being one of them.

Since Byzantine times, Rhaedestos served as a place of exile for persons
of importance. In 1720, the Hungarian revolutionary Prince Francis Rákóczi II,
a fugitive in the aftermath of the Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699, lived in
Rhaedestos as an exile until his death in 1735. He was attended by a great
entourage of courtiers, fellow fighters and collaborators, among whom was the
above mentioned writer Kelemen Mikes (modern edition 2000). The Hungarian
exiles bought a group of houses in today’s Frangomachalas and had them
interconnected via subterranean tunnels. There were still some of their
descendants living in Rhaedestos in the late 19th c.

It is not known how
the construction and use of wooden houses was established as the predominant architectural
type in Northern Aegean, Propontis, and along a large part of the Black Sea
coast. Neither is it known when Rhaedestos came to be entirely built up of
wood. The only constructions not made of wood were those belonging to the State
and the Church, which were made of stone as a status symbol and also in the
interests of longevity. As a result, the town gave the impression of a mass of
dark wood spread out along the sea front. The various quarters constituted a
succession of grey wooden houses of characteristic uniformity. Rhaedestos is
completely lacking in multiform eclecticism, characteristic of 19th
c. cities, as well as in the Western version of eclecticism adopted by the
Ottoman Empire in the context of its effort towards modernization.

Extant wooden houses
are today in their final stage of disintegration, and can be found in small
groups or individually surrounded by a sea of blocks of flats. Legally of
course they are protected as listed properties, which is probably a mistake, as
being surrounded by concrete blocks they are aesthetically devalued as well as
exposed to a multitude of agents of further decay. What would have saved them
would have been to declare the whole area as preservable.

Under Ottoman rule, the force that kept Eastern Hellenism together was
the Eastern Orthodox Church. The conquering Turks, who were experienced in the
political life of Central Asia as well as in the management of large numbers of
sheep and goats, devised original administrative schemes as shepherds of people.
One of them proved of great importance for the Greeks: it was the Romiot Millet
(Turkish milliyet or nationality),
which included all Christians of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Turks granted
privileges to the Patriarch of Constantinople so that the cohesion of the
Romiot Millet would be maintained and relations between conquerors and the
conquered would be unproblematic. The Church realized the importance of the
measure and organized itself so that it would govern the whole of the Orthodox
Millet without the intervention of the Ottoman administration. The Millet
system proved so efficient and productive that it lasted from 1453 to 1920, and
vestiges of it are still in existence. The Romiots did their best to preserve
their privileged status and draw maximum advantage from it. Thus, communities
were organized in independent administrative units governed by their elite
members, the Demogerondes or Elders. Each
community was headed by the local Metropolitan.

The effects of the Crimean War of 1854 as well as the Tanzimat or Reorganization, i.e. the social
reforms of 1839 and 1855, which granted privileges to minorities, were of great
benefit to Ottoman Greeks, who rapidly rose socially and formed part of the
urban class of the Empire. The social and economic success enjoyed by the
Greeks of the Empire was the result of the free hand granted by the Ottoman
State to the many minorities within its borders. Greeks were particularly
successful in the arts and sciences, economy and commerce. Thanks to their
cosmopolitanism, they were able to compete for the top positions in the
economy, since they could not have a career in the public administration or the
army. They spoke foreign languages, they travelled a lot, and they felt at home
in contemporary international contexts. Greeks were dominant in commercial and
industrial enterprising as well as in banking.

Education was the field par excellence for Romiot activity and
creativity. It was there that Tanzimat legal provisions allowed a wide scope of
action to school committees and community administrators. As of the 17th
c., communities began to build schools and employ qualified teaching personnel.

The Greek communities of the Ottoman Empire constitute a significant,
though little known, success story. Thracean Hellenism was able to overcome the
adverse conditions of the first centuries after the fall of the Byzantine
Empire and regroup. The age-long political tradition of the Greeks is centred
upon their gathering for the ecclesiastical Eucharist in the context of the
community system of self-government. The community institution dates from the
mid-Byzantine era, when, according to historical records, there were
communities governed by “the prominent citizens and fathers of towns”. Community
self-government was characterized by responsible social democracy, solidarity,
charity, organization of tradesmen in guilds and great emphasis on education. It
is in fact a successful political system, based on direct democratic
decision-making and centred on the concept of the human Person. Community
organization was completed with the setting up of schools, and formed part of
the system of privileges enjoyed by The Church. At the same time, Romiot
tradesmen formed isnafia or guilds
(Turkish esnaflar). Isnafia were
closely knit societies of fellow tradesmen, a continuation of a Byzantine
practice. The Ottoman State did not object to isnafia as they made economic
sense.

The zimmi,
i.e. the non-Muslim peoples of the Bible
living in the Ottoman Empire left behind their second-rate status as conquered
subjects thanks to the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774, as well as the
Tanzimat reforms of 1839, and rose to the urban class. Those were mainly the
Romiots of the historic Hellenic East, organized in communities that were
politically subjugated but culturally and economically thriving. The Greek
communities were conscious of their historical and cultural identity.

In the 19th c., cultural societies appeared whose objective
was the promotion of education, an area on which communities put a lot of
stock. The first such society was the Hellenic
Philological Society of Constantinople of 1861 (Mamoni 1968, Mavridis 2003,
2006), which was very actively engaged in the organization of education for
Greek youth. Soon after, many similar societies were instituted throughout
Thrace. In 1872, the Educational Society
of Adrianople was set up. Members of such societies addressed each other as
“brothers”. Such developments were intensified in the context of nationalistic
rivalries in the Balkans around, and mainly after 1878. In view of the
awakening of Bulgarian nationalism and of the threat posed to the Romiot
national identity by Pan-Slavism and related activities undertaken by the
Bulgarian Exarchate, the Greek bourgeoisie of Constantinople sprang into
action.

In 1871 the Thracean Educational Society of Rhaedestos
was set up, and in 1897 it was relaunched as the Bizanthe Reading Society. Rhaedestos thus set an example which was
followed by other communities all around it. At the beginning of the 20th c.,
there were similar cultural associations even in small villages, especially in
the Ganochora area. The various societies of Macedonia and Thrace were
supported by the Association for the
Dissemination of Hellenic Letters, which was founded in Athens in 1869
under the aegis of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The aim of such
societies was mainly to improve the educational standard of the young and also
of adults, and through education to strengthen their sense of national
identity. Their campaign was an aspect of the emergent Hellenic national ideal.
At the forefront of the trend to set up and run such cultural societies were
bourgeois merchants and artisans, who exhibited impressive zeal in the pursuit
of the education of the young. Their dedication satisfied their feelings of
nationhood and was a source of pride.

The members of Romiot
guilds were also mobilized to contribute voluntary personal labour. Builders
worked without pay to erect school buildings and society headquarters, whereas
rich businessmen vied for the offer of donations. It was in that context of
selfless competition that the ideal of the community or national benefactor
emerged among the rich merchants. The most prominent benefactors in Rhaedestos
were the following: Stavros and Paschales Georgiades (Georgeadeion Boys’ School and Nursery), the wholesale merchants of
grain Constantinos and Georgios Theodorides (Theodorideia Ekpaedevteria or Educational Establishments) and K.
Constantinides. Greeks took pride in their societies and saw them as evidence
of the special character of their culture and history. (Mavridis 2003)

The Society of
Rhaedestos housed a library and reading room, a collection of antiquities from
the wider area of the town, a coin collection, a picture gallery, and a hall
for the town band. In the basement, facing the seafront, there was a refectory.
The Society held regular feasts and balls. Its archaeological collection is now
housed in the museum of Thessalonike.

Rhaedestians were also
inspired by their religious faith to erect new churches and repair those
frequently destroyed by earthquakes or endemic fires. A great number of
churches are mentioned in historical records, which have since disappeared
without trace. Rhaedestians also excelled in church chanting, and its cantors
and ecclesiastical music teachers were known over a wide area covering
Propontis and the Aegean.

The French
archaeologist A. Dumont, who travelled in Thrace in 1868, wrote that the Greeks
managed to preserve their language and civilization in spite of their having
been through very adverse historical times. Their attachment to their learned
tradition is particularly noteworthy, as is the survival of an ethos based on
age-long tried and tested traditions. On those foundations, education paves the
way towards spiritual revival and the acquisition of solid knowledge.

Also, in 1871 the
correspondent of the French Review of Two Worlds was impressed by the Greeks’
commitment to education. That commitment is still going strong, though
occasionally in a formalistic kind of way. According to historian George
Finley, revolutionary Greeks exhibited a lower percentage of illiteracy
compared to their contemporary Western Europeans.

As a characteristic
example, Finley noted that the humble teacher of an obscure village near
Rhaedestos owned a library with classical Greek books. He was impressed by
Greeks’ determination to preserve their national cultural identity, and by the
ubiquitous and dominant presence of sophisticated Greek communities. In
contradistinction, he added, the first book in Bulgarian was published as late
as 1806.

Today’s efforts on the
part of Eastern Greeks and their descendants towards the preservation of
historical memory harks back to that old community spirit.

The world-wide upheavals
and restructuring of the international status quo during the first two decades
of the 20th c. radically affected individual lives. Great numbers of
people were obliged to emigrate in the aftermath of the redrawing of national
borders and redistribution of territories. Rhaedestos/Tekirdağ changed in
character as a result of the international maelstrom that swept away peoples
and empires. Its numerous Armenian inhabitants left for the East. The Greek
Rhaedestians had to emigrate to Greece, as provided in the Treaty of Lausanne,
though their departure preceded the signing of the treaty. The totality of the
movement of peoples that took place before the Lausanne Treaty falls within the
so called Exchange of Populations agreement. Tekirdağ, like so many other towns
of the East, loses its cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism and acquires a
homogeneous character.

Since the early 1960s,
Tekirdağ has followed the path of other developing towns, and, thanks to the
rich agricultural lands surrounding it, has grown into an advanced, though not
particularly charming, Europeanized city. Recently, new industrial
installations have added a touch of modernism and entrepreneurialism to it. Nevertheless,
its historical depth is in evidence throughout the city.

[1]I owe that piece of information
to Nikos Pantazopoulos, of Rhaedestiniot extraction.

[2]The word is of
Persian provenance (kull = the whole), and refers to a central concept in
Turkish town planning. A külliye normally is a complex of buildings centered on
a mosque and managed as a single institution, incorporating social,
administrative and religious functions. A typical külliye would contain, among
others, a market place, a mosque, a school (medrese), a poorhouse (imaret), a
bath (hamam), a hospital, public fountains (sebils), an inn (han), a cemetery
and administration buildings. Külliyes existed in the great Islamic cities of
central Asia such as Samarcand and Esfahan, but also in cities on European
ground partly re-built by Ottoman Turks such as Adrianople and Constantinople.